Survey this daguerreotype of Von Hayes, and you may be tempted to focus solely on the tenuous unibrow that introduces him to the world as a cocksman of distinction. But peer more deeply, and you’ll see a countenance riddled with mounting horror …

What is it just off-stage that troubles him so? A baleful incubus plucked from a Goya painting? The dark ways of Ron Hassey? The approaching hoof-beats of the decisive yet still fraught Cold War endgame?